Hongmin Ni, PhD

Research Assistant Professor and Cell Isolation Core Technical DirectorMD, Shanghai Jiaotong University Medical School, 1993M.Sc., National University of Singapore, 2002Post-doctoral fellowship and Research Associate, University of Pittsburgh, 2009

I was born and raised in Shanghai, China. I became a general surgeon after I gained my MD. After more than 6 years working as a surgeon at Shanghai in China, inspired by a strong desire to do basic biomedical research, I started my scientific career in 2000 and obtained my Master of Science degree for the Molecular and Cell Biology at National University of Singapore in 2002. However, the 6 years' clinical experience and the sophisticated surgery skills that I have learned helped me a lot in my later animal research work. I did my Post-doctoral training at Dr. Xiao-Ming Yin's laboratory at University of Pittsburgh, where I have gained extensive experience on the regulation of cell death and autophagy in endotoxin-induced liver injury. I joined Dr. Ding's laboratory at the department in 2009 to study the role of autophagy in alcohol and drug-induced liver injury. During my graduate study and my postdoctoral training, I have vastly expanded my knowledge and molecular and animal experimental technical skills including hepatocyte isolation, xenograft, mouse tail vein injection, mouse partial hepatectomy, and bone marrow transplantation. In addition, I also have extensive experience in molecular biology including molecular cloning, adenovirus and adeno-associated virus construction, virus packaging, amplification and purification. I also have extensive experience for cellular fractionation and organelle (including mitochondria, endoplasmic reticulum, autophagosome and lysosome) isolation.

Research Interests

The Mechanisms of autophagy in alcoholic liver diseases and drug-induced liver injury.Alcohol abuse is one of the major causes for liver diseases worldwide. Excessive alcohol consumption causes liver steatosis, fibrosis and even liver cancer. Acetaminophen-induced hepatotoxicity causes acute liver failure among thousands of people every year in US and European countries. However, the mechanisms of how alcohol or acetaminophen-induced liver injury are not completely understood, and effective prevention and treatments of alcohol- and acetaminophen-induced liver injury are still lacking. My research focuses on how autophagy protects against alcohol- and drug-induced liver injury and how to manipulate autophagy to prevent and treat liver injury.

Isolation hepatocytes from human and animal livers.Isolated hepatocytes from rodents and human livers have become an invaluable tool for liver research. My responsibility in the Cell Isolation Core is to isolate hepatocytes from human or animal livers and provide technical support for research investigators at KUMC and other KU campuses.